NewsWrap
for the week ending August 23rd, 1997
(As broadcast on THIS WAY OUT Program #491,
distributed 08-25-97)
[Compiled & written by Cindy Friedman, with thanks to Graham Underhill, Brian
Nunes, Jason Lin, Chris Ambidge, Rex Wockner, Lucia Chappelle and Greg
Gordon, and anchored by Cindy Friedman and Tory Christopher]
In Jamaica, four prisoners are dead in rioting sparked by a plan for condom
distribution. Corrections Commissioner John Prescod announced that he was
considering distributing condoms to both prisoners and guards to stop the
spread of HIV, and both groups were profoundly insulted by what they saw as
an implication that they were homosexual. The guards went out on strike this
week demanding Prescod's resignation. Left to themselves, prisoners at both
the Saint Catherine District Prison in Spanish Town and Kingston's General
Penitentiary attacked fellow inmates they believed to be gay. Three of the
men assaulted were stabbed to death, and a fourth one died when a row of
cells was set afire. A dozen others have been injured. Heavily armed
soldiers were sent in to quell the disturbances and police are investigating
the deaths. Negotiations with the guards are still underway.
[ADDED TO THE BROADCAST RIGHT AFTER "NEWSWRAP":]
Updating our lead story in "NewsWrap" this week from Jamaica, where
implications of homosexuality through an announced prisonwide condom
distribution program led the offended guards to walk out and the inmates to
riot ... the guards have now returned to work, with a stipulation against
condom distribution in the prisons, but further waves of inmate violence have
brought the death toll to 16, all of them men the prisoners believed to be
gay. At last count the 4 days of rioting have resulted in 30 additional
injuries among the inmates, 8 of them shot by guards. It now appears that
authorities have succeeded in restoring order, but we'll have more on this
story next week as circumstances warrant.
The Australian government gave $200,000 to Western Australia's AIDS Council
and Gay & Lesbian Counseling Service to design its first suicide prevention
campaign targeting lesbigay youth ... but Family Services Minister Judi
Maylan has banned their product, which she says, "has leaned a little bit too
much towards the promoting of a gay and lesbian lifestylye" without saying
enough about suicide. The groups believe that successful youth suicide
prevention must boost self-esteem. The banned designs show same-gender
couples kissing, with the headline, "Trust Your Feelings" and the caption
"These feelings are a natural and healthy thing, they are one more part of
who you are, it's OK to question your sexuality, it's OK to be unsure, and
it's OK to take your time finding out. Many young people feel the same, you
are not alone." Moylan wants the groups to go back to the drawing board, but
they are appealing her decision. Brian Grieg of the Australian Council On
Lesbian & Gay Rights said, "She is placing at risk more lives because of her
incompetence and prejudice."
In Canada, London Mayor Dianne Haskett this week explained to an Ontario
Human Rights tribunal why she refused to issue a proclamation of Gay Pride
Weekend in 1995 to the group HALO, Homophile Association of London Ontario.
In four hours of tearful testimony, she told how her religious beliefs made
it impossible for her to support either abortion rights or homosexuality. To
stop issuing proclamations altogether or to refer requests for them to the
City Council she believed would be damaging to her leadership. Therefore she
privately tried to develop a set of personal guidelines she thought would be
fair because they excluded proclamations relating to abortion whether pro or
con, and those relating to sexuality whether heterosexual, homosexual or
celibate. By contrast, the official guidelines for proclamations approved by
the City Council deal only with their language and not with their content.
Haskett admitted that although she'd been thinking about her policy for over
a year and a half, she had never attempted to write it down until after
learning that HALO would be requesting the pride proclamation. That was also
soon after another human rights tribunal had fined Hamilton Mayor Bob Morrow
$5,000 for illegal discrimination for refusing to issue a pride proclamation
there. Under cross-examination, Haskett admitted that she would knowingly
issue a proclamation for a group that refused to hire gays and lesbians, but
not one that similarly discriminated against blacks, women or people with
disabilities. She also said she would reject proclamation requests from gay
and lesbian groups of educators, elders, people with disabilities, or victims
of violence, because all such groups emphasized the sexual aspects of their
members' lives. If the adjudicator finds Haskett to have illegally
discriminated, HALO hopes to force Haskett to issue their pride proclamation
and to change her policy.
Another Canadian, Lynn Johnston, this week saw her widely-syndicated comic
strip "For Better or For Worse" become controversial with a four-day
storyline about a young gay man. In 1993, the character of the boy next door
"Lawrence" came out at the age of 17, leading as many as 19 newspapers to
drop the strip altogether and as many as 40 to skip the gay storyline.
Lawrence has actually appeared in many editions of the strip since, but no
notice was taken because he was not discussing his sexual orientation. This
time, United Press Syndicate felt it was necessary to give newspapers advance
warning that Lawrence would be coping with his boyfriend's move to Paris to
study piano and thanking the main characters for their support when he came
out. GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, noted the irony
that "For Better or For Worse" is actually one of the most family-oriented
strips available. No outright cancellations have been reported, and although
some 30 papers requested past episodes to rerun, even some of them ran the
current strip. Given the advance warning, the Christian Family Network
geared up for protests, asking their members with newspaper subscriptions to
cancel their deliveries for the four days of Lawrence's story. Three
conservative groups demonstrated outside two North Carolina newspapers that
ran the strip, but both papers continued to run it. But in Timmins, Ontario,
where the "Daily Press" in 1993 had received dozens of calls from offended
readers, the paper's managing editor said that this time the calls came from
people begging for the chance to read the strip. Lost in the hoopla is the
bottom line that the recognition of Lawrence's orientation made no difference
to something like 98% of the papers.
Two public officials in Alberta are trying to defund a gay and lesbian
history project at the Red Deer Museum. The museum won a $10,000 grant from
the Ministry of Community Development as part of a larger grant to the
umbrella Alberta Museums Association, after going through the normal process
of review and approval by a panel of experts. The funds have already been
disbursed, and it would be unprecedented to withdraw them. But after the
grant was featured in a local newspaper, Alberta's provincial treasurer
Stockwell Day and member of the Legislative Assembly Victor Doerksen said
they received over 50 calls in less than a week in opposition. They said
callers either wanted the public money to go to what they feel are more
deserving projects, or didn't want to be "confronted" with homosexuality.
Day, a former assistant pastor and Christian school administrator didn't
want the museum promoting what he called the gay and lesbian "cause".
Doerksen felt the project served to legitimize homosexuality. Red Deer
Museum Director Wendy Martindale has no intention of returning the funds, and
said the opposition only reinforced for her the importance of the project.
The funds will hire a researcher to speed work that's already been underway
for 3 years, collecting photos, oral history tapes and other materials about
gay and lesbian lives and organizing in Alberta.
Chicago is ready to flaunt its North Halstead "Boystown" as a center of gay
and lesbian activity. 3.2 million dollars have been earmarked for what the
Transportation Department calls "streetscaping" in North Halstead. The
city's given similar facelifts to some 20 other neighborhoods including
"GreekTown" ... but none has been as flamboyant as the plans for North
Halstead, which center on a pair of 25-foot-tall flying saucer-like
structures bearing rings of light in the colors of the rainbow flag. A
series of steel towers will display still more rainbow light rings, and the
rainbow flag will hang from light poles for several city blocks. Local
merchants support the plan, which also includes planting trees, installing
antique-style streetlights, and widening sidewalks to increase foot traffic.
Construction is scheduled to begin in early 1998.
And finally ... the rainbow colors also turned up to less unanimous acclaim
this week in a rather unexpected venue: Pope John Paul II's visit to France
to celebrate the 12th annual Festival Of Youth. Jean-Charles Castelbajac was
invited to desgin outfits for the Pope, and the 500 bishops and 5,000 priests
helping out at the Festival. He's better known for dressing the punk rock
groups The Sex Pistols and The New York Dolls, but in this case he may have
been thinking of another of his clients, openly-gay singer/songwriter Elton
John. His rainbow scheme, like the gay and lesbian rainbow flag, was
intended to represent the inhabited continenets of the world ... but while
the gay and lesbian symbol has six stripes, Castelbajac slighted Australia by
deleting the sixth color, that doubtless too-gay purple. Only the Pope got
to wear all 5 colors of the abbreviated rainbow, in the form of crosses
stitched by master embroiderer Francois Lesage. The other clergy each had a
single color band on their cream-colored robes, to form the rainbow when they
assembled. Fashion reporters also noted that John Paul's preferred footwear
under his cassocks is Doc Martens boots ... but this has prompted absolutely
no speculation that he is a lesbian.
---------*----------
Sources for this week's report included: Associated Press, Austin
American-Statesman, The Australian, Charlotte (NC) Observer, London (ONT)
Free Press, London Times, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Sun, Post-Herald
(Birmingham, AL), Press Association (UK), Reuters, The Scotsman, Telegraph
(London); and cyberpress releases from the Christian Family Network, and the
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.